News — David LaForce

Today I’m going to give a little ‘love’ to Gamma World 2nd Edition. Although you’d be hard pressed to find a player out there to calls 2nd Edition their favorite iteration of the game, it still has some cool work done for it so I’ll take a look at the art of The Cleansing War of Garik Blackhand [which BTW wins the TSR award for longest title of a product]This is a strange little bit of work as there are two credited artists in it, Jim Holloway and David ‘Deisel’ LaForce. As the first printing was in 1983, this seems...

Tamoachan… even the name can give one shivers, and adding it to the complete title of C1: The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan gives you an instant classic. This ‘deluxe set’ module, with over 16 illustrations in a separate players pack, was written by Harold Johnson & Jeff R. Leason back in 1980. It is for levels 5-7 and pits a party against a Mesoamerican threat that not only educates by also inspires, as it did with my creation of Taux for Tales of the Emerald Serpent two decades later.The cover art here is done by Erol Otus, with back cover...

I’m going to be honest here, I’ve never played any of the A series of modules, and for that I feel horrible.  I've owned these modules for twenty-two years, and begged my DM Mark to run them on several occasion, but since he doesn't own them, it just never happened.Truly, I feel sick over that, especially when digging through A1: Slave Pits of the Undercity this week for AotG.  I mean, just start out with the title, ‘Slave Pits of the Undercity’!  It is yet another example of a Robert E. Howard theft, or perhaps Fritz Leiber.  I’m seriously freaking...

Ok, so today is a ‘big one’.  Perhaps not as big as they get, but certainly in the upper echelon of what makes a classic TSR module. D3: Vault of the Drow was written by Gary Gygax sometime around 1978 and finally released in this particular version in 1980.  It is a pretty cool piece of work, although really more of a stopgap [much like D1-2 Descent into the Depths of the Earth] between Against the Giants and Queen of the Demonweb Pits.  Coming in at a rather standard 28 pages, Vault is a smooth running exploration adventure that leaves...

In 1980, TSR once again released a new version of their Basic D&D Boxed Set.  This one featured new cover art by Erol Otus, and an eye-catching magenta box.  Its creation certainly didn’t revolutionize gaming, but it did show a steady evolution from small press niche publisher to mid-range gaming company. Written by Tom Moldvay with revisions done from the original text by J. Eric Holmes, this particular rules book used the core group of the first TSR ‘pit’ for the final time. Covered by Erol Otus, who got the call for both the Basic and Expert boxed sets from...